Friedrich Hayek

Friedrich Hayek

British economist and philosopher
8 May 1899 — 23 March 1992

Follow this author

Friedrich Hayek's books

 TimeFavorites

From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step.

Earn money by taking surveys! International offer!

The more civilized we become, the more relatively ignorant must each individual be of the facts on which the working of his civilization depends.

Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.

What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.

The mind cannot foresee its own advance.

Nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.

Earn money by taking surveys! International offer!

Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.

To understand our civilisation, one must appreciate that the extended order resulted not from human design or intention but spontaneously: it arose from unintentionally conforming to certain traditional and largely moral practices, many of which men tend to dislike, whose significance they usually fail to understand, whose validity they cannot prove, and which have nonetheless fairly rapidly spread by means of an evolutionary selection - the comparative increase of population and wealth - of those groups that happened to follow them.

The more the state "plans" the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.

No human mind can comprehend all the knowledge which guides the actions of society.

Many of the greatest things man has achieved are not the result of consciously directed thought, and still less the product of a deliberately co-ordinated effort of many individuals, but of a process in which the individual plays a part which he can never fully understand.

Human reason can neither predict nor deliberately shape its own future. Its advances consist in finding out where it has been wrong.

There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.

Accept

We use cookies to personalise ads and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our advertising and analytics partners. By using our site, you accept the use of these cookies. See details